Are drugs STILL the norm?
 

1) Do you believe the vast majority of, if not all, competitors, are taking banned drugs?

2) Do you believe drug taking is still systematically organised by teams, and which ones?

3) Does it make you laugh when Tour organisers say they are winning the battle against drug cheats?

geee wizzzz mr. EPO what do you think?

1) No
2) Maybe some teams. No speculation on which.
3) No

I believe that it was more systemic, but that it is becoming increasingly a case of "bad eggs". Anyone who thinks that we could just flip a switch and everyone would just stop is delusional. People need to keep getting caught to show that a) the tests are working, and b) you will get caught if you do it. The more that the riders realize that they won't be able to get away with it, the lesser the problem will become. However, it is likely that there will always be someone who does it because they think they can get away with it, or because they are faced with the alternative of losing their career because their performance is declining and have in their mind nothing to lose.

1) No, not since they banned amphetamines back in the day. I think there's still a bunch, but it does feel like the number is dropping.

2) I don't think directly, anymore. Maybe a couple have indirect involvement. I don't think there is anything like Festina's program or the East German women's olympic gymnastics team anymore.

3) No. Testing is improving, and I think even LNDD/Chateau-Malabry or whatever they are now has to have cleaned up their act. Having someone like Meyers-Augustin so thoroughly discredit your lab and lab techniques, under oath, had to have been so incredibly embarassing. They're still leaking information like a sieve, but you do get the sense that they are being much more careful about AAFs. Who knows, though, it's not a very open system. They could be relying on witchcraft to detect positives for all I know. The fact that they are catching people for supposedly undetectable drugs is a good thing. I'm not as upset about any of the AAFs as I would have been in years past.

One of tyhe reasons for the thread title was, with some involvement with track and field, I am aware that, in athletics, it is virtually impossible to compete successfully at the highest level without taking performance enhancing drugs. As pro cycling is far more professionally run then athletics (drug taking in the latter tends to be due to the inclination of individual athletes and coaches rather than organised sysdtematically) it would logically follw that drug taking would also be more professionally and systematically organised. We know for a fact that, until very recently, this was the case. The question is, is it still? I think many people here have been taken in by the spin doctors whom some teams seem to regard as nearly as important as the riders. Chris Boardman is correct when he says that, so long as sanctions remain lenient, there will always be cyclists prepared to take drugs, the less lenient the sanctions, the more there will be.

It's funny that cycling takes such a beating for TRYING TO CATCH the dopers. Now MLB, the NFL and the NBA promote doping through their bogus "testing", and get no flack at all.

/where's the disconnect?

... Brad

1. Yes
2. Yes-Saunier-Duval, obviously, Euskatel, Barloworld, Rabobank, and Milram
3. No. They are trying.

Not like you have any bias in the matter....

Publicity. Cycling catches you, makes it a head line, makes you an example and tosses you from the sport for 2 years. MLB really does not care. They try to not make it is story, and the media here does not want to make a story of it. Didn't it take 25% of MLB testing positive for any testing plan to actually come into MLB. The caught 25% of players doping and it made a ripple here.

American's don't think their guy cheats. Look at NASCAR. They catch a guy cheating a couple of times a year, with no serious repercussions. They catch your guy they were wrong. They catch the other guy, thats why my guy never wins.

No. I think the vast majority are taking drugs that have yet to be banned.

Yes, but no ideas which ones. I don't think most riders have the personal resources (including time and connections, not necessarily money alone) to do it without support, especially considering how stringent testing has become.

Laugh? Out loud. There will always be those who find ways to circumvent the rules and more who will fail trying, which will continue to embarass Tours in the future.

yes to all 3

I don't race but have heard from local racers (not sure what Cat - I heard this through third parties) that doping of some sort exists even at the amateur weekend warrior level.

Anyone here who races wanna chime in?

I think It's wrong to say MLB doesn't care. Besides the cheating factor, the all-American game is definitely tarnished when it inspires young boys to takes potentially dangerous drugs to compete. I think it matters to a lot of people that image is maintained, even if it is largely a sham.

I will agree various sports organizations in the US and elsewhere weigh the benefits of looking the other way with airing the dirty laundry in public. There's a lot of money involved, and performance - including the type of derring do that these drugs make possible - sells tickets.

Based on nothing but my own wildly uniformed opinions gathered from here, various cycling news sites, what the kind folks at Versus tell me, and what I can see with my own eyes during races...

1.) No. Either they're taking something that can't be detected yet, or the sport is cleaning itself up. I'd like to believe that the sport is cleaning itself up. But I get all Mulder like that.

2.) A few, but I think that will diminish as tests improve and sponsorship money dries up.

3.) Very little about doping makes me laugh.

MLB cares because Congress cares, but they have not always. MLB needed something to save themselves after the a bunch of people making way more money then I ever will stopped the sport to fight about who gets to be the richest. What was that something, big guys hitting a little ball really far and doing it often. So swing away and rub yourself down with the "cream" between innings, we don't care.

1) I believe they are clean until they are proven to not be clean. That being said, when they are proven to not be clean, i am generally not surprised.

2) "Organized" may be going too far. I could go with any of "facilitated", "accommodated", or "ignored". As for which teams, same answer as for which riders.

3) Not any more. I may have laughed the first five or six consecutive years they said it, but any joke eventually gets old.

1. No just like any other high profile sport there are abusers. Bicycling is just been given more publicity.

2. Most teams are or soon will be drug free or lose sponserhsips and money talks.

3. I am proud of the stand the tour is taking and applaud their efforts.